He grumbled and kept mussing up his hair.
“He said something about boys being there,” I continued. “Boys in ‘ungodly hoods,’ as he called them. And today at the picnic, Laurence told me—”
“Why were you talking to Laurence?”
“He came after me when I was speaking to Fleur, and he told me what was meant by the ‘necktie party’ line on those Junior Order of Klansmen notes. He said a person gets hoisted off the ground with a rope around his neck—not long enough to kill him, but enough to scare him out of town.”
Joe didn’t respond. I craned my neck to better see him and found his eyes haunted, his breathing shallow.
“Are you all right?” I asked.
He blinked. “Did Laurence say that’s what people are planning to do to me?”
I nodded and exhaled an erratic breath that made the lamp’s flame jump. Shadows streaked across Joe’s face.
“What about Dr. Koning?” he asked. “What about the medicine he shot into Hank Denney’s veins in my bedroom?”
“I don’t think there was any medicine, Joe. Daddy told me not to blame Uncle Clyde—or to murder him. He begged me not to kill anyone and insisted I leave town and better myself. He said to come back to Elston when I’ve got the tools to change things.”
Joe’s brow creased. He curled his lips and slammed the back of his head against the wall, jangling a harness hanging above him. “How the hell would something that occurred before I hit your father have caused his death?”
“The other night, my father said that his heart wasn’t strong enough that Christmas Eve. I think the Klan might have terrorized him. Do you remember what he looked like when you saw him walking down the road? Was he holding a crate of whiskey?”
“No, there weren’t any crates.”
“Did he walk strangely, like he was hurt? Or scared?”
“I didn’t even see him until I hit him.” Joe rubbed his face with the palms of his hands, stretching his cheeks and his eyes in the flickering light. “He just sort of sprang out from nowhere in the dark. I was already out of sorts.”
“Because Deputy Fortaine caught you in your father’s car with that boy.”
Joe’s hands froze on his face. His eyes turned a liquid shade of brown, and I sobered up enough to realize I had trod into delicate territory. I pressed the heels of my palms against my eyes to dull an awakening pain.
“If Clyde Koning didn’t kill your father,” said Joe, sounding out of breath, “then even if something did scare him before I saw him that night . . .”
I waited for him to continue. My hands stayed shoved against my eye sockets.
He sniffed. “If Dr. Koning didn’t kill your father, then that would mean that I did, after all.”
My palms slid down to my temples. “I don’t entirely believe that to be the case.”
“My mind has always insisted that Koning killed him behind the closed bedroom door,” he said, his voice cracking, “but what if I’ve only been lying to myself? What if I caused your father more than a busted leg and a sore arm? I drove home after drinking, for Christ’s sake.”
“I know you did, and I still hate you for that, to tell you the truth.” I smacked my hands against the floorboards and wiggled myself up to a seated position against the wall. “But Uncle Clyde said some things that made me feel absolutely certain that something more occurred that night. He told me that you were a sacrifice back then. He also spoke of sending you off to a better life—up to a job in Seattle—to appease his guilt.”
“When did he say all of that?” asked Joe.
“Today, right after the Fourth of July picnic—after I thought you’d died, and he was trying to reassure me you hadn’t.” I shifted myself in Joe’s direction and braced my palms against the floor in front of me. “Somehow, Uncle Clyde was still involved, even if he didn’t administer poison. I’m certain the Klan was involved, too, including the Junior Order of Klansmen. I don’t think it was ever a simple case of a white boy hitting a black man with a car.”
“That’s what I’ve been telling you all along.”
“I know. But I don’t think you had the details quite right.” The muscles in my neck stiffened. I grabbed my left shoulder and massaged a spot that ached. “I feel I should go to the Dry Dock. There’s that big old tree sitting between it and Ginger’s . . .”
“You can’t just wander into a restaurant and ask if anyone there tried to lynch your father.”
“What else am I supposed to do? Sit around and wait for someone to finally tell me the truth about what happened that night? No one is ever going to explain it to me. You’ve hidden parts of the night from me yourself.”
“What parts?”